Investment Advisory

SERVICES

Cornerstone Capital Group works with families and individuals, foundations and endowments, multifamily offices and other registered investment advisors. We help our clients to develop and manage a customized investment strategy aligned to their financial and values-based objectives.

Collaborative, Personalized Planning

Our job is to get to know your passions and priorities then construct a portfolio that best expresses your values and achieves your goals. We spend time ensuring we understand your financial goals and impact priorities, then help with planning, investment recommendations, operational support, and ongoing reporting/ monitoring. We work with you at a pace that is comfortable for you and ensure that you gain confidence in your decisions before they are implemented. Patience, flexibility and transparency are inherent in our approach to investing and client service.

Independent Recommendations

We work closely with you to identify the most appropriate asset allocation and investment opportunities to meet your needs. Our recommendations are based on our proprietary manager due diligence process, which integrates sustainability and impact considerations across asset classes. We do not accept sales commissions or finders’ fees from fund managers, and our independence means we can recommend any investment strategy we believe will benefit our clients. We also produce in-depth thematic and sector research, which allows us to probe deeper into the thought processes of managers.

Seamless, Convenient Implementation

We seek to make the implementation of your customized investment plan as seamless and straightforward as possible. In our experience, every transition plan is different. Our goal is not to replace your portfolio overnight, but to agree with you on a plan and pace of change that works for you. Our client service team offers meticulous oversight of your implementation, coordinating with relevant specialists such as attorneys, trustees, accountants or other advisors. We are completely transparent in our fee structures—we do not bundle other costs into our service proposition, but rather itemize all investment fees and custody costs to give you a very clear picture.

Fully Integrated Reporting

We provide our clients with a robust consolidated portfolio reporting solution. Performance is shown for each holding during a variety of time frames and since inception, and relative to appropriate benchmarks. These reports are highly customizable. Our integrated reporting platform incorporates sustainability indicators into the portfolio report along with performance and risk indicators. We combine all assets, including those held across multiple custodians, non-custodied, and hard-to-value holdings. We also report on assets held in most countries, in almost any currency.

SERVICES

Our team has a heritage of working with institutions, individuals, family office, foundations, and trustees. We work with our clients to develop and manage a customized investment strategy aligned to their financial and values-based objectives.

Understanding Your Unique Requirements

More institutions are seeking to align their investments with their missions while fulfilling their fiduciary duties. They need nuanced, specialized advice about manager selection and portfolio construction, and solid operational support. We craft investment portfolios that are tailored to your impact priorities and that earn competitive financial returns while managing relevant risks to the satisfaction of stakeholders. We help eliminate the operational, financial and educational barriers for institutions to support their mission-related goals by investing for impact.

Aligned Policies, Allocations & Investments

We engage with clients early on to establish a common understanding of your goals. Our team offers decades of experience with philanthropies and impact investing and can help to articulate those priorities as part of an investment policy and asset allocation. We then identify the most appropriate investment opportunities across all asset classes, supported by our rigorous asset manager due diligence process. On your behalf, we hold in-depth discussions with managers to understand how the portfolio is likely to look and behave under changing market conditions. We carefully consider managers’ approach to integrating impact and environmental, social and governance factors into investment decisions. Our proprietary thematic research, on areas of interest to our clients, enables us to probe more deeply into the managers’ thought processes, strategies and integration of sustainability and impact.

Collaboration and Learning

Clients and individual committee and board members have different levels of knowledge and comfort with investing for impact and all the related terms and approaches. Our relationship with our clients is often based on a desire for shared learning. Cornerstone will share our best thinking and advice with you but we are eager to hear your questions, concerns and ideas. Together we can make sure we are on a path that serves your needs and makes the best use of our capabilities. Past engagements have included supporting boards of directors and investment committees to reach consensus on appropriate strategies. Clients have also brought ideas to us which we were pleased to implement, such as seeding a new sustainable REIT strategy and purchasing carbon offsets.

State-of-the-Art Operational Support

In our experience, every transition plan is different. We seek to make the implementation of your investment plan as seamless and straightforward as possible, on a timeline that works for you. Our client service team offers meticulous oversight of implementation, streamlining the process and coordinating with relevant stakeholders. We also provide our clients with a robust consolidated portfolio reporting solution that can be customized to your preferences.

SERVICES

Our team has a heritage of working with institutions, individuals, family office, foundations, and trustees. We work with our clients to develop and manage a customized investment strategy aligned to their financial and values-based objectives.

Partnering for Stewardship and Progress

Sustainable and impact investing is all we do. We have deep experience in both ESG/impact investing and wealth management, and believe sharing our expertise with other advisors can add value to all involved. We support RIAs and multifamily offices with policy development, manager recommendations, education, and ongoing advice. We understand the value of long-term client relationships and the importance of mutual trust. We are committed to helping you enhance your client relationships.

Thoroughly Researched Recommendations

Cornerstone’s open-architecture platform and proprietary, institutional-quality due diligence uniquely positions us to help our clients to maximize long-term excellence and impact within the context of fiduciary duty. We source investment solutions across all major asset classes, including thematic solutions, all intended to deliver to our clients a cutting edge, end-to-end portfolio solutions suite. In order to be recommended to our clients, a manager must demonstrate to us a clear strategy, an effective and consistent process for implementation and sufficient expertise in the factors that may impact the risk and performance of the strategy, including sustainability. We evaluate manager track records, whether they offer a unique investment approach and how clearly they can articulate the objectives of their strategy.

Educational Services

Cornerstone brings together the expertise of our investment advisory, research, and impact teams to provide insight on a range of topics and thematic areas. We can create customized educational curriculums focused on building understanding of the sustainable and impact investing space as well as specific investment themes. Cornerstone’s professional networks and active participation in field-building initiatives also give us a robust perspective on the diverse and growing investment landscape of sustainable investment.